We performed a comparison between Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Nutanix Acropolis AOS to be more difficult to deploy than Cisco Hyperflex Hx Series. Additionally, Nutanix Acropolis AOS lacks the level of integration that Cisco offers.
"I save both physical and virtual space."
"The software is easy to setup and manage, and the support is excellent."
"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the nodes are Active/Active, and allow us to do upgrades on any node without any downtime."
"One of the standout features of StarWind.com is its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with Dell systems. This integration provides users with an unmatched level of convenience and compatibility, allowing for streamlined operations within a Dell environment. This compatibility factor alone can save significant time and effort for IT professionals, ensuring a smooth integration process and optimized performance."
"StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."
"The price of the solution is good, especially when it comes to complex network solutions, such as UCS and Connect."
"The speed, storage, and management are the most valuable features."
"The feature that we are most interested in is the scalability. When needed, we are able to add more nodes and scale it up further."
"Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting."
"It's easy to get the tool started."
"The flexibility is its most valuable feature; the ability to quickly deploy a number of help machines. It is not constrained by what we want to do."
"Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is simple to use, user-friendly and has been best for our purposes."
"Karbon is a must-have as it drastically simplifies the deployment of Kubernetes."
"The administration console, automation, and the first cluster are all valuable features."
"It is easy to use. One of the things they have as a design goal is to reduce complexity and simplify things."
"The fact that there is only one interface to deploy a complete solution for maximum storage is fantastic."
"SRM capabilities for replication have been proven reliable and very useful for our organization."
"Acropolis AOS's networking concept is excellent."
"It supports multi-cloud integration that includes AWS, Google, and Azure."
"One major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly. You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"The deployment could be made a little bit easier, as we still seem to struggle with it a little bit for a day or so to get it running."
"It needs more detailed documentation."
"I would like it to be easier to manage the server, create VMs, and manage the VMs on the client."
"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."
"Stability is really poor, especially the storage stability. We lost data. There were disruptions of clusters and that's one big pain point of the solution. It's not stable enough, the documentation is not good, there's not much documentation available. For every call we need a tech engineer."
"Their technical support is very bad. We had an issue where instead of an engineer we got a PDF "doctor" that didn't know anything about our problem which was very frustrating."
"Lacks easy integration with other vendors."
"I haven't been too impressed with the Cisco HyperFlex HX, honestly. It's a hard concept."
"There could be better support for high power ESX and other cross platform applications."
"We would like to see a cloud version of Acropolis AOS. Currently, we're trying to implement an AWS environment for some solutions, but we would like to use another technology also to enhance our organization, so we are looking for another technology for this, especially a cloud solution."
"One of the very important things that I would like to see in Nutanix, but I'm not sure if it's in the roadmap or not, is to have some kind of caching optimization at remote sites, to build active-active data centers more easily."
"It's lacking in some features but overcompensating in others."
"It would be great if they could improve the GUI features."
"There is a need is to be able to consume Nutanix storage from outside the cluster for other, non-Nutanix workloads."
"It would be ideal if it was more secure."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
More Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 90 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 3rd in HCI with 194 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is rated 8.0, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series [EOL] is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, VMware vSphere, Dell PowerFlex and Hyper-V.
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With Nutanix you have the freedom of choice. You can deploy it with several server hardware vendors or completely in the cloud.
I don’t know Hyperflex at heart, though.
Also, support at Nutanix is outstanding.
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS
Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper-converged infrastructure at scale. We looked into it but then ultimately chose Nutanix Acropolis.
We liked Hyperflex’s virtualization feature and the unified network fabric it provides. The Integrated Managed Controller was a nice feature to have. It is expandable, stable, and has good redundancy. If you require more processor cores per box, Cisco HyperFlex is a good solution for you. Support will depend on the type of contract you have, with some requests taken care of immediately and others taking longer according to the engineer’s expertise.
While Hyperflex is designed for any company size, I wouldn’t recommend them for small businesses. It also requires a solid knowledge of Cisco products, as the UI can be difficult to manage. Upgrading to a newer version can also be cumbersome and could use some improvement.
We chose Nutanix because it is easier to use and is more cost-effective. Nutanix allows us to deploy, run and scale applications both on-premises and in the cloud. It has excellent support. You can log the query straight to a technical expert, which is good if you have staff not familiar with AOS. It is easy to scale by adding new nodes, and the company is constantly adding new features.
Nutanix is not for everyone, though. The Nutanix Cloud System can be complex to maneuver when at the command line or when troubleshooting.
Conclusions
Nutanix is better for medium-sized companies and when you need a cost-effective solution. Cisco Hyperflex is a complete solution but is better suited for large enterprises. It works better if you are already a Cisco user.